Agrihoods and Field Building with Daron "Farmer D" Joffe
Archeological studies show that a dramatic shift happened between ten to twelve thousand years ago in the way humans inhabited the planet. This is a time when it is believed that humans began to create more communities around agriculture and the domestication of plants and animals.
Shifting from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to more permanent lifestyle changed everything. Villages, towns, and cities formed with access to farmland and food being critical to the viability of the population.
Another drastic shift in how we dwell has also happened over the last 150 years. Not only has the population has exponentially grown, but so too have cities and urban areas. No longer are the majority of people involved in some form of agriculture or cultivation of food. We have shifted from living close to the land in multi-generational households to isolated boxes sold to use as a dream that is adorned in white picket fences.
That is until now.
There is a growing trend to combine communities with working farms. These developments have been coined agrihoods, and have been targeted to appeal to people that want to live closer to fresh food and nature.
While there has been criticism that agrihoods target affluent millennials and baby boomers that have the means to move out of the city, there is more nuisance to that story.
Farmer D out of Atlanta, Georgia is arguably the country’s most experienced agrihood farm designer with projects including Serenbe and Rancho Mission Viejo. He sees agrihoods as a needed component to help conserve agricultural lands around the periphery of cities that are at risk of getting developed.
“Think of hamlets,” Farmer D says. “Homes are clustered together where people live and commerce takes place. This is the sustainable way to build, and it also happens to preserve the land needed to grow food.”
Agrihoods blend new urbanism concept such as walkable, mixed use neighborhoods with healthy living. The agriculture component can either be a large operation where the community actually pays for a farmer to grow food, or it can be done where people can come together to farm cooperatively.
Agrihoods don’t just have to be in suburban or rural areas either. There is a growing desire for people to live closer to their food, to trees, and to nature. Fortunately this can be done in the heart of the city through community gardens, pocket neighborhoods, and even multifamily apartment buildings.
If you are interested in agrihoods, we are here to help for people that may be looking to live in an agrihood community, invest in a project, or to create a legacy with their property when time comes to pass on ownership.
